Drivers’ memo #9: Trip distances

The cavalry is coming! Good news. We got a small grant from Otago Museum’s “Participatory Science Platform” to help improve the software. This means that we can now (i) eliminate repetitions and redundant fields in the monthly data uploading sequence, (ii) improve the reports with new and more scientifically accurate performance indicators, and (iii) improve the indicators for Outlanders in particular. We will publically launch the project and refreshed software in mid-June. Please hang in there till then.

Saying thanks: We are currently preparing a report to describe the design and rationale of the entire project and how the performance indicators of EVs and PHEVs are calculated. We would like to list you along with all the FtF test drivers’ in the acknowledgements section to recognise your stamina and creative feedback to improve the beta software. If you would prefer not to be named, please let us know by Friday 28 April.

1-click surveys: In March we asked whether you thought the government would reach its target of 64,000 LEVs registered by 2012. Your consensus was that the target probably will be achieved, but more active leadership and investment to reduce barriers may be needed. In April we asked whether more of your friends and colleagues would buy an EV if there were more fast chargers in my region. Unsurprisingly, the majority said yes. But several of you also stressed that perceived lack of rapid chargers was more perception amongst prospective buyers than a real problem, and some regions are already well served with rapid chargers. See the latest post at www.flipthefleet/discussion for a summary of the results of this and earlier polls.

Data analysis example: This month’s example of future use of the data is about “trip distances” (round trips out and back to your homes or business charging station). The attached graph shows a cumulative frequency distribution of 234 trips recorded by you all up until the 10 April 2017. Half of the trips taken in fully electric vehicles (not PHEVs) were 30 Km or less, and 93% of all trips were 100 Km or less. Overall, 94% of all the trips are within the range of 24 kWh Leafs. Obviously even the smallest EVs can serve the majority of EV owner’s trip needs without having to charge along the way.

The graph stops at 200 Km, but your database already records some spectacular ventures away from home base: 6 trips were between 200 and 700 km long; one was 740 km long (6 charges along the way), another 749 km (9 charges); and the record goes to an EV conversion that went 3,000 km from Dunedin for a holiday in the Auckland region (12 charges). So it’s not just our heroic Leading the Charge teams that put in the long journeys!

Some people prefer a PHEV to an EV for those occasional long journeys. So far the trip distances travelled by PHEVs are very similar to that of EVs in the Flip the Fleet database: the median (50 percentile) distance was 39 km for PHEVs compared to 30 Km for EVs. The average trip distance is 65 km for PHEVs and 63Km for EVs. These differences are not statistically significant (there is a 22% probability that the observed difference is simply due to sampling chance). Of course we need more data, especially from PHEVs (please fill in your monthly trip records!) to be sure, but in the meantime we assume that trips by PHEVs and EVs are around the same distances.